7 notable US-backed regime changes since WWII

7. Muammar Gaddafi (Libya) — 2011

Colonel Moammar Gaddafi seized power in Libya in 1969, ruling the North African country as a dictator for decades. His government was tied to the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in Scotland, which killed 270 people. However, following the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, he acted as an ally of Western powers.

In 2010, amid a wave of pro-democracy protests in the Middle East that came to be known as the Arab Spring, Gaddafi’s government faced widespread armed resistance.

In March 2011, President Barack Obama authorized a series of air strikes against Gaddafi, which were joined by other Western powers. Months later, rebel forces removed Gaddafi from power and killed him.

“In retrospect, Obama’s intervention in Libya was an abject failure, judged even by its own standards,” wrote Alan J. Kuperman, associate professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, in a 2019 Foreign Affairs piece.

“Libya has not only failed to evolve into a democracy; it has devolved into a failed state. Violent deaths and other human rights abuses have increased severalfold.”